Recruiters are becoming more and more like marketers in the tools and methods they use Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own The digital age is changing the way all fields work across the board and HR is no exception As a result a plethora of tools and platforms now exist to help HR departments work more efficiently If youre an HR manager you probably already use one or more of them on a daily basis But what if I told you that youre likely missing out on another category of tools and techniques typically used by other departments According to Reoot Peleg an HR evangelist and the founder of HR for HR the largest HR community the fields of recruitment and marketing in the digital age have significant overlap Recruiters need to create branding for the company while marketers create branding for customers Peleg told me By and large however recruiters are still not taking advantage of todays technologies the way marketers are he added Things like tracking specific ads or analyzing measurements to see what works and what doesnt are still not fully integrated in the recruiting process Peleg said Today these two fields have become very similar Its almost the same job In fact the combination of the two has created a new breed of digital recruiters -- recruiters who use the same cutting-edge tools and techniques that marketers use in order to actively pursue top talent for their companies Here are several of these tricks and technologies to help you take your own recruitment campaigns to the next level The good news is that most of these tools are free and easy Youll add them to your recruitment campaigns in minutes Using social media more effectively Today no one needs to be convinced that social media is an important recruitment channel From Linkedin to Facebook groups even Twitter and Instagram recruiters are active on social media posting job ads But which ones are the most effective If youre not tracking your ads you have no way of knowing Thats where a technology called UTM comes in A UTM code is a simple string of text that you add to the end of the URLs used in your recruitment ads You add a campaign name medium and source The campaign could be the job title the medium could be where the ad appeared job board careers page specific Facebook group name and the source could be the specific site eg Facebook Linkedin Then by turning to Google Analytics youll be able to see exactly how much traffic came from each parameter This will give you a precise picture allowing you to focus your efforts on what works best An example of adding UTM parameters to a URL There are several tools that automatically add a UTM code to your URL for you Check out utmio for an excellent free service Another good tool to use in conjunction with UTM codes is Bitly a link-shortening service with two advantages The first is that it hides the UTM code from the user Some people notice such things and dont like being tracked The second is that you can easily get stats on how many times the link has been followed right on Bitlys site Its easy and useful Recruitment Its just like marketing Peleg told me that HR professionals need to think of candidates the same way marketers think of customers and to create a detailed candidate persona The candidate is a customer in every way he said We need to go after them with remarketing blog posts PR and more in order to increase the intent and push for a close -- just like how a marketer would go after a customer These two fields have become very closely related One great way to emulate the strategies of marketing is to use the smart targeting capabilities of Facebook and Linkedin By targeting specific demographics and geolocations youll be able to make sure your job postings are seen by your target audience With Facebook you can get very specific and if youre savvy enough you can really use targeting to your advantage For instance if youre posting an entry-level position you can target the life event of recent college graduates Or you can get even more specific by targeting interests like nursing design or advertising Linkedin also has a long list of targeting options that you can use creatively For example you could select certain Linkedin Group members whose specific interests you could target or you could go after the followers of certain companies or some important individual in the field of your job posting Both Facebook and LinkedIn offer guides to help get started Options other than social media Social media sites are not the only alternative to traditional job boards You can find other websites specific to the field youre searching for For instance if youre recruiting for software developers you might consider posting on Stack Overflow and Github which have more than 50 million visitors per month For professional business positions the popular question-and-answer site Quora could be a good place to post And newer recruitment sites like Glassdoor are becoming increasingly popular with job seekers These alternative channels are particularly important with younger candidates so if youre looking for rising young talent you really need to make the most of them Another trick you can borrow from digital marketing is A B testing where you run two or more versions of your job post then get statistics back on which version was more successful This allows you to test different wording in the job description and requirements and see what works best You could also run A B testing on company culture videos or other call to action buttons Countless services offer A B testing some with advanced features Hotjar for example uses heatmaps and user recordings to let you see exactly where people are looking clicking and scrolling -- and where theyre not An advanced technique to pursue top talent Heres a advanced technique to help you more aggressively pursue top talent It entails remarketing any visitor who has been to the careers page of your website Once thats happened you can then use platforms like Google display campaigns Facebook sponsored content Linkedin and Twitter to present ads to this person An ad showing recent funding news -- perhaps explaining how your company has recently raised X million dollars and is now looking to hire top talent -- could have a big impact on attracting additional applicants Here youll need to use a conversion pixel an image the size of a pixel that you add to your site in order to track visitors This pixel records whos been to your page and then allows you to display your ads solely to those visitors Facebook offers instructions for adding the pixel and similar guides are available for other channels One last tool you should consider is email marketing software Despite the popularity of social media email is still the preferred method for conducting business Also you probably have a large contact list in a CRM that is ripe for use Meanwhile there are many great options to help you track and analyze the recruitment funnel One of the most popular and free ones is MailChimp Simply set up an email campaign then seamlessly integrate it into your website analytics You can accurately track the effectiveness of your campaign by recording exactly how many visitors it brought to your site The future What does the future hold for HR Expect to see more analytics-related roles to help you analyze large amounts of data as traditional administrative roles disappear Developing technologies like big data and AI will also have an impact AI is wrapped up in the world of big data Peleg told me The challenge for now is that we dont know exactly what it is we need to extract from the vast amounts of data It takes a lot of work to figure out what will give us insights And according to Moran Shoham head of HR at GeoEdge digital recruiters should be using AI-based SaaS tools such as Gloat or Woo Considering the rate of technological development its clear that making strategic use of new technologies isnt only for the digital marketer Shoham said Digital recruiters need to be just as savvy if they want to stay competitive So thats a little bit about why its important to add these technologies to your recruitment campaigns Joining forces with your marketing department could also prove beneficial as those folks are already likely experienced in using these tools and tricks One thing however is clear The age of the digital recruiter has arrived